It’s 8:30 PM. The dishwasher is humming. A blue light from a forgotten iPad glows in the corner, casting long shadows. The silence you craved all day has finally arrived, but it isn’t peaceful. It’s heavy. The thought of making one more decision—what to pack for lunch tomorrow, whether to start the laundry—feels physically impossible. You unlock your phone and scroll, not for pleasure, but for numbness. And the whole time, a voice in your head whispers, “You’re so lazy. Why can’t you just get up?”

As you read that, just notice your body. Are your shoulders up by your ears? Is your jaw tight? That tension is data. It’s the physical receipt for a day of invisible, high-stakes labor.

You believe you are a lazy parent in that moment. You are not. You are a highly-skilled Air Traffic Controller for your family’s brains who has just finished a 12-hour shift without a single break. Your system isn’t lazy; it’s offline. You spent the entire day managing the flight paths of your children—their schedules, their sensory needs, their emotional regulation—and now your own control tower is completely out of power.

“I feel like two different people. There’s the ‘work me’ who is competent and on top of everything. And then there’s the ‘home me’ who can’t even decide what’s for dinner. It makes me feel like a complete fraud.”

Co-regulating another human being is one of the most neurologically expensive tasks a brain can perform. You are literally lending your prefrontal cortex to your children all day long, serving as their external executive function. There is a real, measurable cognitive and energetic cost to this labor. Your collapse at the end of the day is not a character flaw; it is a predictable energy deficit.

Society calls this “parenting” and treats it like an invisible, effortless act of love. That is a gaslighting lie. It is high-stakes cognitive labor with no training, no support, and no sick days. It’s the pressure to manage a full-time job, plus the after-school chaos of getting kids from Kirkwood to soccer practice in Webster Groves, all while appearing perfectly calm. The system isn’t designed for your success; it’s designed for your burnout.

THE “YOU ARE HERE” MAP: The Parental Energy Budget

ENERGY DRAINS (Your Daily Shift):

• Making decisions for others.

• Sensory management (loud noises, constant touching).

• Emotional co-regulation (calming tantrums).

• Masking your own stress to appear calm.

• Task-switching (homework, to dinner, to bedtime).

ENERGY DEPOSITS (Building a Better Control Tower):

• Sensory quiet (5 minutes alone in a dark room).

• Decision-free time (ordering takeout, not cooking).

• Radical delegation (assigning a task to a partner).

You are the most critical piece of infrastructure in your family’s life. It’s time to stop blaming the infrastructure for collapsing under an impossible load. It’s time to demand better systems and support. That’s not selfish; it’s mission-critical. Executive Function Coaching isn’t about being a better parent; it’s about building a more sustainable life so you don’t burn out. Stop blaming the Air Traffic Controller for being exhausted. Start building a better control tower.